mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Texas and Ohio State continue their runaway status as 1-2. Texas's spot at the top of the list is pretty obvious since, IIRC, the Big 12's television revenue is extremely unbalanced and Texas, as the flagship school not located in a tiny state where the only thing to buy is John Deere equipment, is the major beneficiary of the current system.

But I've always been curious where the Ohio State revenue gap comes from. The Big Ten splits all TV and bowl revenue right down the middle, so the only differences can come in stadium gates and sheer sport quantity. (For instance: I'm guessing the Michigan hockey team rakes in most of the difference between Michigan and Penn State by itself.) Ohio State does support a huge number of sports, but I don't think the crew teams or whatever at the tail end of OSU's athletic department bring in a million between them, let alone 18. And Ohio State's stadium is considerably smaller than Michigan Stadium.

OSU's visual cacophony of in-stadium advertising is no doubt part of the gap. The rest of it is probably luxury boxes and primo seating; I'll be interested to see what the numbers look like in two years when Michigan's suite spigot is turned on.

If you're curious as to the per-school average for BCS conferences:

Big Ten: $76.4 million

SEC: $71.1 million

Big 12: $66.5 million

Pac-10: $58.7 million

ACC: $54.1 million

Big East (football schools only): $45.5 million

Someone hide this from Clay Travis*: even when the SEC nuclear bomb contract goes into effect—which adds 60 million-ish per year—the Big Ten teams will still be ahead on total revenue. Not that this will stop the avalanche of OMG SEC FINANCIAL DOMINATION stories.

Fire this woman immediately. Here's Pat Forde on something called "First Take." As it is on ESPN, it contains no information, but holy hotpants you might want to watch through the Michigan segment, which is right after the ND opener:

I quote this woman now. I quote her:

"They want to get the 'woof, woof' back at the Dawg Pound, back at the Wolverine house, the Big House."

"They're leaving for all the wrong reasons," Ortmann said of the Wolverine quitters from the interior line. "They're making false accusations. I got along with Boren, (Grand Haven's Dann) O'Neill and Kurt. But I don't understand where they're coming from.

"The family values at Michigan are there. That's not a question in anyone's mind. So for them to come out and make those accusations is not fair to anyone."

I don't think did O'Neill said anything other than "I'm a better fit at Western," but take that you other guys. Take that.

That's even worse than when U of M occasionally gets called "the wolves." At least that is an understandable, if inaccurate and annoying, short hand...I can only assume that she later said that OSU is counting on having a big advantage at home in The Jungle this year.

Yeah, uh, 1. Not a fucking dog and 2. Fix your syntax you mouth-breather. You are paid to speak on television. "They, uh, want, uh, to get the woof woof back at the, uh, Dawg Pound, back at the, uh, Wolverine House, uh, Big House." Just spit it out no matter how fucking stupid it is.

"This is the EMU game, not the emo game."

They make up for the smaller stadium by charging almost $10 more per ticket.
Tickets for M games are about $50, yes? OSU tickets are $60. So they're pulling in over $6M gross per home game on ticket revenues while M is only pulling in $5.5M. Approximately. And that doesn't include luxury suites.

SO....
If M were a bunch of even more greedy bastards (like osu), they could pull in closer to $7M per home game.

OSU also recently signed a larger deal than UofM did with IMG, which handles a lot of the corporate sponsoring. OSU also advertises inside their stadium with IMG, so that is another area they are banking.

I think one source of the $$ disparity might be basketball attendance, too. A quick search didn't yield any results for basketball attendance averages, but I bet OSU gets more people at their games, and would be shocked if they didn't charge more, as well.

What's the attendance at an M home game? Or what was it last year maybe. I was thinking it was getting down to 5-6k people at the end of the Amaker Disaster.
I would hope it's full again.
I'd be surprised if osu isn't charging 20-25 for a home game. And their arena holds about 20k for basketball. That's $400k per home game. That's $8M/yr for basketball (20 home games). Is M pulling in much more than half that? That could be a couple million more of the gap.
Crisler only holds 13k. It's a dump and needs to be replaced. Or expanded and improved.

The difference is that OSU has...wait for it... luxury boxes. Once the New stadium is done M will be right up there. I wouldn't be surprised if we take that number one spot. We get a lot of money from apparrel sales in California. i know it sounds weird but a lot of the mexican gangs use the block M as a gang sign.

All this time we'd been laboring under the mistaken impression a wolverine was an overgrown weasel, when in fact it's a canine. Whew, glad we got that cleared up. Now we can get back to the business of winning again.

Occasional excess is necessary to remedy the deadening effects of moderation.

I grew up a UM fan. I'm an alumni of the University of Michigan. Hear me when I say, I want no mercy (football-wise) for any team we face whether it is home or away. I want a gluteus kicked as we speak. It may not sound so civilized. I don't care! NO MERCY!

I remember our streak of wins against OSU in the '90s. I felt a little sorry for them. Never, never again will that feeling occur. I live in Wisconsin now. I want them destroyed on the court/field, even game board the Wii. UM kicks the SEC's can. I want the winning to start in bushels! Let's start this new season!
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"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" --Alfred Lord Tennyson/ John Sheridan B5

I'm usually pretty reserved when it comes to the idea of embarrassing opposing teams. However, after all the shit we've gone through the past year+ on the field and in the media, I am fully in favor of hanging every goddamned point possible on every opponent we play for the next decade.